


Cause and Effect

by theskywasblue



Category: Firefly
Genre: Gen, Introspection, Sanity/insanity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-07
Updated: 2010-07-07
Packaged: 2017-10-10 10:42:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/98869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theskywasblue/pseuds/theskywasblue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>River: Noun – a natural stream of water of fairly large size flowing in a definite course or channel, or in a series of diverging and converging channels.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cause and Effect

**Author's Note:**

  * For [macavitykitsune](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=macavitykitsune).



> For the prompt: River/Anyone - "Destroyer of worlds"

_What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday, and our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow: Our life is the creation of our mind._

Steel isn’t indestructible, only tempered. It can be torn apart, like the stitching at the edges of her blanket, or smashed, like the glass of water Simon gives her to wash down the pills.

Simon, Simple Simon. From the Hebrew meaning “One who has heard.” Except that she’s the one who is always hearing, even when she doesn’t want to; even with her fingers deep enough inside her ears to touch the cold spaghetti tangle of her picked-apart brains there’s always a clamour and a rattle inside her skull. The sound of the world falling out around her feet, of steel tearing and the cold vacuum of space rushing in. The pills, the shots and the promises only muffle it, until it’s like hearing the ocean through a seashell; physically impossible, just a distortion of reality.

Reality: Noun – Something that exists independently of all other things and from which all other things derive.

Difficult, ostensibly, to determine the causative and derivative in her psychological equation. Insanity – surely derivative, the results of probing and needling and butchering, of treating her brain like a Christmas roast. Yet, similarly causative; the cause of Simon’s sighs and Simon’s worry and Simon’s grief. She hears it in the way he repeats her name over and over, “River, River, River,” even in his dreams.

River: Noun – a natural stream of water of fairly large size flowing in a definite course or channel, or in a series of diverging and converging channels.

Causative, definitely. Moving constantly, rolling, dancing, tearing, panicking and screaming. A River shapes, sometimes takes the path of least resistance, but still has the power to change the world.

World: Noun – Any sphere, realm or domain, with all pertaining to it.

Her world is strange now, unfamiliar, crowded with thoughts and emotions and knowledge that isn’t her own. She knows how Zoe’s face looks in candlelight and the names of all the men who died in Serenity Valley; how to assemble and disassemble a Colt .45 pistol and how to make moonshine. She knows so much sometimes it’s hard to tell what she knows.

She can’t even drown the voices out in a sink full of cold water because Simon gets scared.

The ship, Gaia in steel, is the only safe place, the only thing she can’t tear apart with her hands and teeth and desperation. She can hold on to it, press her bare feet against the metal, and feel the chill of the space outside through her skin. It’s a small container in a vast unknown, just drifting and turning, but if she can claim a bit of its steady peacefulness, then maybe she can make some sense of the whirlwind between her ears.

Maybe she can shift the laws, so that somehow she will create her reality instead of being created by it.

-End-


End file.
